‘This is a book about connections.
Not the connections that Alexander Bell hoped to forge with his telephone,
but the connection that deaf people made before a widespread campaign
to prevent & ban the use of sign language’
– Sarah Marsh, author of A Sign of Her Own
[ About A Sign of Her Own ]
Ellen Lark is on the verge of marriage when she and her fiancé receive an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell.
Ellen knows immediately what Bell really wants from her. Ellen is deaf, and for a time was Bell’s student in a technique called Visible Speech. As he instructed her in speaking, Bell also confided in her about his dream of producing a device which would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now, on the cusp of wealth and renown, Bell wants Ellen to speak up in support of his claim to the patent to the telephone, which is being challenged by rivals.
But Ellen has a different story to tell: that of how Bell betrayed her, and other deaf pupils, in pursuit of ambition and personal gain, and cut Ellen off from a community in which she had come to feel truly at home. It is a story no one around Ellen seems to want to hear – but there may never be a more important time for her to tell it.
[ My Review ]
A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh published with Tinder Press February 1st and is described as a book that ‘offers a fascinating window onto a hidden moment in history, and a portrait of a young deaf woman’s journey to find her place in the world, and her own authentic voice‘.
The experience of living in a world with no sound must be overwhelming and frustrating. Sarah Marsh is deaf. Growing up, the daughter of a deaf mother, she learned to communicate via lip-reading and the use of hearing-aids, only learning sign language later in life. Her interest in Alexander Graham Bell grew and she began to research his teachings on Visible Speech, a method defined by Collins Dictionary as ‘a system of phonetic notation invented by Alexander Melville Bell (1819–1905) that utilized symbols based on the schematic representation of the articulations used for each speech sound’
What shocked me in my own research was discovering that Bell discouraged the use of sign language. As a teacher he promoted the idea that deaf people should not inter-marry and that a deaf person should be absorbed into the hearing world. It was up to him and his associates to encourage this idea that children should be taught, from a young age, to lip-read and speak. They were not to stand out as different and should be assimilated into society through their learned ability to speak. There is a much better description here from History Today, that explains this concept better.
‘Oralism, the belief that deaf people should use lip-reading and speech rather than sign language became widespread following his influential support. However, this overlapped with his research into eugenics and, along with believing that sign language should be avoided, he also believed deaf people should be kept apart to prevent the propagation of hereditary deafness, ‘a deaf variety of the human race’. This meant deaf children were kept apart from each other so they could better integrate in mainstream society. The loss of sign language has been considered by many to be a detriment to the deaf community of America.’
Sarah Marsh wraps fact and fiction throughout her tale. We are introduced to Ellen Lark, who was ill with scarlet fever at a young age leaving her with no hearing. She learned to communicate with her sister Mary and her mother using a homemade form of signing but, as she grew older, her mother was determined for a better life for Ellen. She attended a school for deaf children that discouraged hand signing and promoted the use of lip-reading and oralism.
Ellen was a good student, eventually coming to the attention of Bell himself. She moved near his school in Boston, under the care of her grandmother. While there, Ellen became a confidante of Bell’s and she watched his excitement grow as his idea about the telephone began to take shape. Bell hardly slept and, between his teaching and inventions, he ran himself into the ground.
The story shifts to the future when Ellen is on the cusp of marriage. She receives a request that Bell needs her to assist him defending his claim that he is the rightful inventor of the telephone, as a patent dispute kicks off. Ellen is torn between Bell’s request, her doubt over her betrothed and her memory of another love that might have been. Ellen Lark is a good, loyal person and she is torn with making a decision that she knows will impact her life moving forward. Can she stand up and defend the man she feels betrayed her and others in the deaf community? Or will she deny the request?
Sarah Marsh takes the reader on quite an extraordinary journey, providing a unique window into a changing society from the perspective of the deaf community in the 19th century. I did struggle, at times, with parts of the plot but for me the strongest element of this book was the depiction of the characters themselves. It was also fascinating to imagine the way that society was reinventing itself as communication, in all its forms, was developing.
Sarah Marsh is very passionate about identity, specifically deaf identity, and connections. In writing A Sign of Her Own, she has highlighted a history that most of us know nothing, or very little, about. Quite a unique and educational read, A Sign of Her Own is an interesting and thought-provoking debut.
I’ll leave you with the words from Sarah Marsh:
“I grew up deaf and had been taught to hide my deafness…I wanted to understand why my family’s deafness had been reduced to a medical history, where being deaf was an impairment that needed to be fixed. It didn’t have to be this way. Deaf people have a rich culture and heritage, rooted in sign language. My research took me to the history of the telephone.”
[ Bio ]
Sarah Marsh was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish prize in 2019 and selected for the London Library Emerging Writers programme in 2020. A Sign of Her Own is her first novel, inspired by her experiences of growing up deaf and her family’s history of deafness. She lives in London.
X ~ @SarahCMarsh
